The first issue was released this month, just in time for the Halloween season. I read it last week… and I survived! Here are one-line synopses and rhyming pseudo-haiku reviews of the four stories in Nightmare Magazine issue one.

I recently picked up a used copy of Earthmen and Strangers, a 1966 anthology of short stories edited by Robert Silverberg. As the cover attests, the book contains “humans and aliens on a collision course – star-studded science fiction.”

In 2010, I posted some haiku reviews of stories I’d recently read. I did some limericks as well. They were all very cheesy, but fun to write. Now I am reviving the gimmick with a new series of haiku reviews. In this post, there is an additional conceit – each bit is phrased as a vague sort of warning to some character or group in the story.

As before, it would be better to call these “synopses” or “selected impressions” instead of reviews. My intent is not to decree whether they have any literary merit, and certainly not to tell you what you should or should not read. In some cases, of course, I can’t help but comment on aspects that would seem out of place if these were written today. The haikus are just a fun record of what I’ve read. Hopefully they give you a taste of what I got from each tale.

Question the motive
of the gift of elixir –
be tamed and changed by the ichor.

The new human occupant of a lonely trading post prepares for the periodic return of the other party.

I thought this was the most compelling story in the collection. Perhaps it is because the stranger is a truly alien presence: there are no little green men or translator hats here.2

The protagonist suffers from a desperate sense of anxiety and belated revelation as the alien approaches. His urgent effort to understand the purpose of the rendezvous – complicated by the calculated recalcitrance of his computer companion – convincingly depicts what it is like to confront the unknown.

Behold, a last gasp
is glanced, like rippled glass,
as solar souls elapse.

Astronomers on Mercury see traces of something more than plain old radiation in the radar scans of a short-lived coronal mass ejection.

Some general criticisms:

All of the earthmen are exactly that: men. (Not counting the girls abducted to help restart society in Dear Devil.) Women: the greatest alien of all to the men of 1950s science fiction?

Many of these stories rely on an automatic communicator or translator device to facilitate dialogue between the titular earthmen and strangers. I think this makes the alien seem more like the merely foreign, with an attendant risk of portraying the aliens as little more than funny-colored people with weird cultures to figure out – or vice versa.

But, more generously, I recognize that the universal translator is a rhetorical device that helps a story advance beyond the mechanics of first contact to a “dialectical” phase where the story’s main ideas can be discussed directly by the characters themselves.

Last but not least, here are physical descriptions of some of the authors, as editor Robert Silverberg saw fit to include in his introductions to their stories:

A haiku about running in the winter, composed while running in the winter:

Footprints in the snow:
I’m tracking other runners,
racing against ghosts.

(Running west into a bracing flurry on Clifton, I noticed another runner behind me. Our paths soon diverged. Coming down Fuller Hollow twenty minutes later, I saw recent prints, stride-lengths apart, smoothed by just a dusting of snow, and knew I had come upon the trail of my pursuer. As I ran where the other had ran before we met, I came up with these lines to remember the moment.)

We all have our needs –
a hunger for friends, or meat;
and some of us feed.

Ever run in to someone you used to know, and wonder what happened to them? Ever wish they hadn’t told you?

Pages from a Journal Found in a Greyhound Bus Somewhere Between Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Louisville, Kentucky

Dreams of roads and rain
in America’s motels,
searching for yourself.

There’s no better place to work out what you’re after than a booth at an all-night diner. If that doesn’t lead anywhere, you might really be lost – or at least there’s a long road ahead. Refill?

Sunbird

Barbecue Sunbird –
a summer delicacy!
Ashes, hatch, repeat.

I want to hang out with Zebediah T. Crawcrustle.

The Monarch of the Glen

Each year, here we meet
to drink and feast but most to
make you monsters weep.

This story features characters from American Gods, and is set in the world of that novel. It’s a spin on the legend of Beowulf and Grendel, inflected by the American Gods idea that mythical figures exist but subsist only on the strength of human belief. The central question of Monarch of the Glen is simply this: what makes a monster?

What shape does Fate take
to end men in her embrace?
All will see her face.

The narrator witnesses an old woman intervene in a bank robbery. He is a petrified hostage; she is grandmotherly, inexplicably calm, and in one brief but decisive moment, terrifyingly fearsome. She is called Witch, and one day you may know her, too.

Ignore your vet – the tabloids are right. If your pets suddenly become vicious, it’s due to mind control parasites deployed by little flying saucers. Fortunately, Fluffy the domestic diva was present to observe the miniature aliens plant their bugs in her tomcat housemates’ ears. As anyone who’s ever played with a cat knows, there are certain threats our feline friends are well equipped to confront – so the outlook is grim for invaders who make such fun-to-chase morsels.

Dusty reels; real FX.
John Carter of Mars conquers
on film and in flesh.

Footage from an early silent movie adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom series surfaces at a film festival. In some ways it is predictably dated, but the apparent age of the actors and the astounding quality of the special effects – from a grisly slaying to the fluid motion of the indigenous Tharks – raise doubts about the film’s vintage. As the protagonist investigates, however, he finds evidence that the footage is entirely authentic.

The lost are not gone, just kept on ice:
brides are in stock, revived for a price.
Each date’s a taste of life
for each unwed dead wife –
and also, one, whose love lies alike.

As if cryogenic preservation wasn’t creepy enough, imagine adding a dose of mail order marriage to the mix. That’s the world of Bridesicle, where the dead may find themselves arrayed like so many flavors in an ice cream freezer to be sampled by wealthy suitors. It’s hard enough to repeatedly suffer a few minutes of rusty reanimation just to be rejected and returned to death, but Mylee, the main character, must reconcile this desperation with her disinterest in the men who could fund her resuscitation.

The human spirit prevails, even as our pitiable remainder is made to sift through the rubble of civilization. A tabletop IED, a bottle of wine, and a scratched Tchaikovsky CD make for one last wonderful evening in hell.

Here we meet Kirby, robotic consort to the insatiable April, as he observes the symptoms of his adolescent step-daughter’s infection with an attitude-altering “happiness virus”. It is at first a matter of some concern to the couple, but thankfully it amounts to little more than a welcome respite from Wynter’s typical prickly temper. After a tense encounter with April’s ex, however, we realize that Kirby may be more than a mere observer. He’s wired for pleasure, yes – but who’s programming who? (Full text at Futurismic.)

Rodents, wings, and angst
with practice casts rats in flight
and traps lass in night.

I think anyone who has ever enjoyed poking around the library stacks has imagined discovering a dusty old tome full of forgotten knowledge. The teenage protagonist of Learning to Fly has found such a book, and has made a habit of sneaking out after curfew to practice its spells. She finally gets it down, but she gets more than she bargained for. Lord Rat is a crafty old bastard.

Maid and sailor, prey,
serve sirens tea and escape
from their slaver way.

Shipwrecked by mermaids, a plantation owner’s young daughter is marooned by the “fishy bitches” on an island with another captive, the self-styled pirate Handsome Jack. The sailor was spared for his ability to tell fearsome tales, and Cassandra has bought some time by promising to serve tea to the mermaids if they recover any from the flotsam. (Mermaids get a kick out of lampooning high society.)

The story is not really about how the two defeat their captors, but about how the grim link of the slave trade connects Cassandra’s childhood naiveté with Handsome Jack’s circumspect remorse. Jack dies before the pair is found. His body is perfunctorily discarded by the rescuers as that of a lecherous knave, but we are left with the impression that his acquaintance has inspired Cassandra, the Pirate Queen, to chart a righteous new course through life.

Sworn to cull stray gods,
a knight and his wooden aide
slay shades and bear loss.

The titular characters (a man and a sorcerous self-motivated puppet) are mercenaries. As the story begins, they are en route to a city where they hope to find relaxing employment; it seems their gigs often develop into events of calamitous proportions. They have just barely arrived in Shûme when a minor gaffe leads to a duel between Hereward and Jessaye, a lieutenant of the city’s Temple Guard. They are well-matched, and the fight foreshadows romance.

Mr. Fitz soon learns something ominous about Shûme’s god, and we learn that the pair has a higher allegiance than to any local potentate. They execute their order’s mandate, but at cost to the prospect of Hereward’s love – and any hope of rest. What are the casualties of duty?

A survey expedition passes through a gateway to a new world and sets up camp to stealthily observe the inhabitants. As might be expected, given the characters’ mission, the worldbuilding is enjoyably thorough. It is culture – both that of the natives and that of the humans – that is the central subject here. The expedition’s leader is challenged to maintain objectivity as his crew habitually anthropomorphizes the alien society. As a crisis facing the locals approaches its climax, Hasan succumbs to the anthropomorphic view: he hesitates to enforce evacuation, and even permits assistance to an alien who has struggled industriously to locate the crew. As a result, a woman he admires dies.

You can have your Harry Potter; I’ll tend to my English wizard needs at the Laundry, “that branch of the British secret state tasked with defending the realm from the scum of the multiverse, using the tools of applied computational demonology”. The protagonist is sent to investigate anomalies at the service’s “funny farm”, which is nominally a secure hospice for those damaged in the line of work. There is, perhaps, a bit more to it than that. (Full text at Tor.com.)

I view this as a parable about the value of communication and the risks of sabotage. Do you fully understand the actions and intents of those you would oppose, and have you made your meaning clear to those who would oppose you? Sometimes, the aims of rebellion can be achieved through cooperation. And sometimes not.

Some have asked why men have nipples. Here, the question is what a man should do if he sprouts a third or fourth and it starts to secrete some sinister oily goo. I’m not really sure; seeking medical care seemed like a good idea, but when your condition subverts most sensibilities and exerts dominion over all you know, your options are limited.

What’s realistic about this delightfully perverted dairy tale is that the real fright isn’t the abomination but the actions of the normal people who must confront it.

A thousand-year soup
brings business and greedy fiends;
brothers save the broth.

I love the idea of a soup that’s been kept simmering for generations. Eat some of it and add something to it every day; think of all the experience represented in that concentrated flavor.

Anyway, when the antagonist and his simian aides come to demand the soup, the cafe’s proprietor calls on her many brothers to defend the desired pot. Although they are each introduced with some peculiar power, it is simple smarts that save the day. In this way, the story’s neat delivery of a lesson reminds me of a fable.

Here’s a far-future story of spacefaring “humans” who travel back to their place of ancestral origin, enduring hardship in order to provide companionship for their eldest, Old John. Sacrifice and revelations ensue.

What is the balance of material and emotional needs? The characters in Wind from a Dying Star must negotiate physical and social scarcity. As Escape Pod host Steve Eley notes, “the greatest crime in this tribe is to allow anyone to be alone.” Space is big, and it is mostly empty.

Initially I was concerned that this was one of those cyberpunk packets that reads like a gadget blog (you know the type – all hot and bothered about the internet, software licenses, and human interface accessories), but I plowed ahead and found it to be a good – even touching – story.

A gentle Laotian journalist, escaped from an oppressive regime, writes thoughtful environmental articles for a media conglomerate more interested in traffic generated by Russian rap scandals. Chastised, he has an opportunity to cash in on exclusive access to a Laotian starlet. But, annoyed by her complicity in the cycle of trash news, and inspired by his father, a gambler and resistance pamphleteer, he bets on another article about botany.

(Speaking of StarShipSofa, my Hugo post has attracted some discussion. I guess that’s what happens when you write something topical of broader interest than AppleScripts for Yojimbo. Hmm. Anyway, take a look!)

The universe reverberates in Horacio Gorrión’s ears, a grand clamoring neurosis of action, stasis, and scale. Counseled on one hand to find purpose through investment in the new physics of Genesis, and counseled on the other hand to accept the benevolent disinterest of a distant Prime Mover, Horacio ultimately succumbs to the briny discord of the squid in the locket.

Existential dread is the fundamental ingredient of Lovecraftian horror, and The City Quiet as Death delivers a compelling portrait of an aged bachelor overwhelmed by the incessant continuity of Creation. The well-realized setting of his Caribbean household provides plenty of calories – and the threat of tentacles is an appropriate garnish.

Today love grows cold –
travel back to set things right;
time is no arrow.

Morris is a tinker who has built something in the basement. His wife is become weary of his work and wary of his absences. Morris has made a great breakthrough, but it is a bittersweet victory. He returns from each test of his machine and of himself to find no progress towards his heart’s goal, which slips further away with each day.

Set in a fanciful alternate reality populated with zeppelins, assassins, and helpful mechanical Wisdom Ants animated by the Brahmanic field, this story’s endangered protagonist – a writer – considers how his protagonist – an inhabitant of a rational “materialist” world like ours – might reason his way out of such improbable peril. Through the lens of fiction, the fictional Benjamin Rosenbaum discerns a solution to his plight.

We, too, can view fiction as more than mere entertainment. Each story is a pattern; equipped with the memory of many patterns, more situations become recognizable and more challenges become tractable. This is how imagination enhances experience. (But don’t forget to vet intuition with reason.)